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THE DREAMTIME

ROGER HAD GONE to sing for Joel MacLeod’s nepheedding, as arranged at the Gathering, and come home with a new prize, which he was anxious to commit to paper before it should escape

He left his muddy boots in the kitchen, accepted a cup of tea and a raisin tart fro, and went directly to the study Jalanced up with an absent ht frown between his heavy brows as he formed the letters, hand cramped and aard on the quill

There was a small, three-shelf bookcase in Jae The serious works occupied the top shelf: a volume of Latin poetry, Caesar’s Commentaries, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a few other classic works, Dr Brickell’s Natural History of North Carolina, lent by the Governor and never returned, and a schoolbook on er written on the flyleaf in a staggering hand

The : a s, featuring Robinson Crusoe; Tom Jones, in a set of seven small, leather-covered volumes; Roderick Random, in four volumes; and Sir Henry Richardson’s s--the first of these decorated with ed driedthe points which various readers had reached before giving up, either temporarily or permanently A copy of Don Quixote in Spanish, ratty, but much less worn, since only Jamie could read it

The bottom shelf held a copy of Dr Saers and account books, several of Brianna’s sketchbooks, and the slender buckraer recorded the words of unfas and poems acquired at ceilidhs and hearthsides

He took a stool on the other side of the table Ja care with it; he wanted these records to be readable He didn’t know precisely what use the collection rained with the scholar’s instinctive value for the written word Perhaps this was only for his own pleasure and use--but he liked the feeling that heto posterity as well, and took pains both to write clearly and to docu

The study was peaceful, with no h as he stopped to rub the kinks fro came to the door, and after a brief colloquy, Jaer nodded vaguely as they bade him farewell,

When he finished, a quarter of an hour later, histhe ache from his shoulders He waited a few hly dry before he put the book away, and while waiting, went to pull out one of Brianna’s sketchbooks from the bottom shelf

She wouldn’t mind if he looked; she had told him he elcome to look at them At the sa, those she was pleased with, or had done especially for hi the sense of curiosity and respect that attends the prying into s of her mind

There were lots of portrait sketches of the baby in this one, a study in circles

He paused at one sht by , back turned, his small sturdy body curled up in a comma Adso the cat was curled up beside him, in precisely similar fashion, his chin perched on Jemmy’s fat little foot, eyes slits of comatose bliss He remembered that one

She drew Jemmy often--nearly every day, in fact--but seldom fullface

"Babies don’t really have faces," she had told hi, as industriously gnawing on the leather strap of Jamie’s powder horn

"Oh, aye? And what’s that on the front of his head, then?" He had lain flat on the floor with the baby and the cat, grinning up at her, which made it easier for her to look down her nose at hi Naturally they have faces, but they all look alike"

"It’s a wise father that kens his own child, eh?" he joked, regretting it instantly, as he saw the shadow cloud her eyes It passed, quick as a summer cloud, but it had been there, nonetheless